


Scarlett Quenched

by CreativeLiterature



Category: Gone With the Wind (1939), Gone With the Wind - All Media Types, Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Genre: Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28545831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeLiterature/pseuds/CreativeLiterature
Summary: Always wishing to be Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, a self insert enters too late - after real life has dealt them a bad hand.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Scarlett Quenched

“Mammy?” I called.

Mammy came bouncing in, her white sash about her head, her breast heaving and her countenance prepared to deal with Mrs. O’Hara’s eldest daughter.

“Yas’m, Miss Scarlett?”

“Fetch me that dress, please,” I stood in the middle of the room, petticoats and pantalets, as the dress was tugged over the bodice and hoops swayed, hiding the slippers beneath, with a shawl around the shoulders. With tugs and pulls the dress came right.

“Thank you, Mammy,” I nodded, and she followed me onto the landing and down the stairs, where her sisters chatted. Both were pretty girls in their own way; one had their eye on the Tarleton boy, and the other on the older Mr Kennedy.

“Suellen, Careen,” I came into the foyer, where the heat could already be felt, the chickens squawking.

Outside, the heat took full force. The rich red of the cut plains of cotton spreading far. The trees over the path which led far off where neighboring plantations permitted. Ellen was far tending some family and Gerald off carousing with the neighborly folk.

Mammy watched Scarlett with a certain pride in her breast as the Tarleton twins rode forth, and Careen met one of them at the door. Scarlett was her mother’s daughter to be sure; though Careen followed her mother’s example, Scarlett had the hollow graces Ellen had after losing Pierre.

Scarlett seldom smiled if at all, for all that she was decorous and graceful.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Scarlett nodded to the twins, after once was polite.

“Scarlett - “ Stuart called after her, as red as his twin. “Save a dance for me at the Wilkes’ barbeque?”

“I should think nothing of it,” I waved him good-bye, and walked down the lane into the quiet under the trees, upon a swing waiting until my father came home.

He did come home even as it grew dark, and Mammy came looking for me. She stood before me with a heaving breast, knowing some foul countenance hung on my shoulders. She knew Scarlett had no breach of honor; yet the same listless dispiritedness hung over her as it once had Ellen.

“What’s wrong, Miss Scarlett?” Mammy asked, as the night bugs drew close.

“Malaise,” I replied, even as Mammy wrinkled her brow. “Surely some smelling salts will help.”

“You feel lahk yous goin’ to faint?”

“No,” I shivered in the cold air, and Mammy wrapped the shawl closer about my shoulders. She knew the condition but not the cause, and led me inside where I would be warmer.

Gerald had made his own silent way home, not that Mrs. O’Hara was there to receive him. Ellen had arrived wan and tired, and I watched the dark circles around her eyes before I closed my eyes for prayer, us all on our knees to the Almighty one, and the prayer book open on my lap.

At night there could be scant heard and underneath the comfy comforter I watched the canopy through listless eyes; with a beating heart in my chest yet an emptiness that might swallow me whole.

And yet it was a lady’s importance in life to be gay and meek at the same time.

The day stung strong as Mammy helped me into my dress, modest and befitting over my hoops, where Careen and Suellen were much prettier. I could not be more sober if I was a war widow.

In the carriage led by Gerald, he whipped the horse as we rode through the county and came upon Mrs. Tarleton, the two sharing jocular interests in fine horse flesh. Her four red headed brood begged her to stop carrying on and hurrying up; Gerald inclined his horse forward and soon the day beckoned with the sight of the Wilkes’ plantation in sight.

India was hostess due to her mother’s passing, and I greeted her as my mother would if she weren’t tending to others who were sickly and in need. Inside, plenty of beaux greeted ladies; among them was Melanie Hamilton, most kind and shy of reserve in nature.

“Scarlett,” her smile was honey in a pot of gold. “You must sit next to me at the barbeque today - oh, that is if you haven’t promised anyone else.”

I merely smiled and held her hand fondly, and moved on, noticing the swarthy tall figure of a black mustached man accoutred in his own sort of look, his appraising glance upon me like none other.

During the nap, I could barely sleep upstairs so I tiptoed my way downstairs, where the men were in their hurried talk of war. Such bravado and preening that they should whip the Yankees. In a room off the stair, I closed it to be alone and looked out the window, breast heaving with compelled emotion.

“Excuse me,” came a sudden voice, the man getting up from the high backed chair which faced the fireplace.

I wiped my tears with the lace kerchief he proferred and could barely look him in the eye.

“Are you alright?” he asked, almost tenderly, almost without a sense of jocularity otherwise noticeable in his canny eye.

“Only as a lady can be,” I told him. I looked into his eyes. “The war will happen, won’t it?”

“If it’s the war you’re afraid of, you have all these strapping gentlemen to keep you safe,” he raised his eyebrow.

“It’s not their valor,” I told him. “It’s the end.”

With sudden gravity he nodded his assent. When the jubilant cries came up we both glanced to the door and we both knew it to be true. I handed him back his handkerchief.

“Keep it,” he smiled, a rarity for the tenderness in his eyes. “You keep yourself safe, little lady.”

Oh! What it would be to feel protected.

He remained behind so that I might slip out before he did. The men took little notice of me, and even less of the man doing the same. Charles Hamilton was approaching Honey, Brent was approaching Careen, and all around war marriages were surely in favor. India had an eye for Stuart Tarleton, while Melanie Hamilton’s wedding to Ashley Wilkes had already been announced.

All around me, people were jubilant and wildly ignorant of the truth yet to come.

Although peace reigned at Tara for a time once the men were sent off to war, Ellen was busy tending the sick and Gerald preparing the plantation to give any aid it could, since his injured leg prevented him from enlisting. It was to Atlanta I knew I must go, as Aunt Pittypat and Melanie’s invitation had come, and besides there was important work to do.

Life in Atlanta was noticeably hurried and full of vigor that the lazy, wan days of Tara which stretched long did not fever. Sick men began to pour in and like Ellen I tended to them even as the sight made me retch and act unladylike. For all that my stomach turned, their pain was more, and I persisted even when the doctor ordered I call it a day.

Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriweather commanded that I should join this sewing circle or that board and so I sat with them, sober as they were as matrons, even as only a few beaux asked for my hand yet I rebuffed them all the same. Wartime was making wives of many women; but there was a ghost in the shell of my body holding it aloft before my time came.

There was a dance to be held to raise money for the Confederacy, and I stayed in my booth and watched the others, even as Melanie donated her wedding ring, I gave my earrings for the cause.

Sober and determined, I kept my eye on the prize, the grey in my dress beginning to tinge my soul.

Captain Butler, as he was introduced, made his way towards me to look at the knick knacks on display.

“Do you still believe it is the end?” Captain Butler asked.

“We must live through it,” I told him adamantly. “For better or worse, our spirit must not be broken.”

“The spirit of the Confederacy?” he asked, leaning closer. “Or yours?”

I fixed him with an eye. “Why, the Confederacy does not know defeat, Captain Butler.”

“And you have?” he inquired, ranging his eyes over me. “For one so young, I would not expect such wisdom.”

The halloos from the stage rose up, and Doctor Meade announced his proposal of bidding for the ladies.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Captain Butler tipped his hat and bowed, and I watched him go, a bit morose for at least there was a man who I could be more than frank with, if only to let a bit of my soul slip out to come and play. But what would Ellen think, of a man not received even by his parents in Charleston?

And there it came, before the music could shudder to a stop - 

“... for Miss. Scarlett O’Hara.”

The surprise was not only mine; but I felt I could deny this boon to the cause without impugning myself. And so I let him take me in his arms, and with unsmiling grace allowed him to take me in the music, and all the while tears grew in my face but were not squeezed against my eyes so that my face went leaden. And when I fainted, they had me brought out on a stretcher with Aunt Pittypat’s smelling salts held over me.

In the months to come, war was drawing down on us all. The shelling had at least stopped, but the silence in some ways was worse than it all. Melanie lay heavily pregnant on her bed, and Prissy for all her claims of delivering a child was lying through her teeth.

“Stay with Melanie,” I told Prissy, gathering my shawl in the simplest of dresses for cotton was so hard to come by, and made my way out of the house and down the street.

Rows and rows of stinking, ailing soldiers with flies over the corpses, too, with Doctor Meade sussing them all with a tired fatigue but an unbroken spirit. I walked over them even as they pulled at my legs, and made my way to the boudoir where laughter could be heard from the ajar windows; where Captain Butler’s carriage was parked. I called out to the windows until I received a response.

“Miss. O’Hara?” Rhett frowned, joined by Belle Watling, that most florid of women.

“Captain Butler,” I called, sure of the damning sight I was causing to my reputation.

He made his way downstairs, and I was reassured by his manly appearance.

“I must ask a favor, if now is not too inopportune a time.”

“Now is not too inopportune a time,” he creased in a smile and a laugh.

“Melanie Hamilton is having her child,” I told him, and with a look closed shut his assumption. “I must deliver it, of course… but there may be a need to take her away from Atlanta - “

“Getting out of Atlanta will be no easy task,” Rhett told her. “There’s barely a horse left, let alone to pull a carriage for the escort you’re asking.”

“If you could try,” I requested. “I realise I owe you no favours, no favours at all. But I would be in your debt.”

“Then I shall do my best,” he bowed and leant to kiss my hand. And off I went, as demure as Ellen might have, my hand burning like a scarlet letter even as he watched me go off.

Beau was his name, and I was as tired as Melanie to be dragged through the wreckage of Atlanta, Rhett the stallion I could embrace for his help through the flames and whinnying and fright that clutched me in those terrible times.

Far from Atlanta, closer to Tara, Rhett told me what he had been ruminating on.

“Yes,” I nodded, and he with surprise that I should discern this turn from supposed cowardice in his spirit. “I know.”

“You know?” Rhett turned to me, grinning. “Is there anything youth cannot?”

“Captain Butler I have a trial ahead of me,” I sighed. “Let us not dally the time away.”

“Then I shall leave you thus,” Rhett stepped off the carriage. “You have a great spirit, Scarlett O’Hara; much like your mother.”

“I can only hope,” I took the reins of the whittled horse, and lamented such that I should lay the cane upon his back.

Tara was a wasteland for the Yankees who had stormed it; and who had made it their base. Ellen lay dead in her grave beside the three sons she had buried, and Gerald was a nervous wreck flitting in and out of the air we breathed. Suellen and Careen were upstairs fighting off the typhoid, and Mammy was helpless, as were all of them but for Melanie who was ardently fighting even as she was so weak; she and Beau who needed milk to sustain them.

If only by virtue of foresight, there came direction and a manner of impressing upon the others the importance of what must be done. Their faces lit up for once more they had Scarlett in the house; Scarlett who was so like her mother that they could almost believe Ellen was not in her grave.

My hands were sore and back ached from working in the fields; but perhaps shamed into doing so, the others helped in what ever way they could, complaining or not. The cotton was hidden well better than might be originally; and hooves upon the path reminded me that tarry not lest disaster strike.

Hidden in an alcove when the soldier made his entrance, the thimble box of Ellen’s was left in plain sight. Succored by the glint of gold, I slipped the dirk from his sheath and slit his throat like a dying pig, using my wrap to stem most of the blood.

I could not leave his body here and he was too much to carry. I begged Melanie’s help, and her eyes widened even as she blamed herself for not being near to protect me. We buried him out back where no eyes saw, but she trembled to see his throat open, but swallowed all the same, knowing their fate could have been just as worse.

The valuables, of course, were well hidden than before.

The Yankee raid was devastating, but supplies were kept well hidden, and my breast went unmolested for the eyes ranging over my decolletage. The soldiers were at it again, for all the aches and pains in my body; for all that kept me standing; for Melanie’s warmth and spirit that reminded me creatures crueler persisted in the woods to touch those whom I held in my heart to soothe and corral.

Likelier still there was a flood of men coming back from the war, among them Frank Kennedy who would see himself wed to Suellen, with my consent. Yet even with Will Benteen who competently helped with the plantation, my spirit was fading. I knew what needed to be done, but the real Scarlett had a firmer aura. Her fire burned bright. Yet mine was ashes and I took to my bed as Jonas Wilkerson sought to increase the taxes on Tara so that he might claim it for himself.

Captain Butler had come to visit, though I only knew it in the grip of death which tied me to my bed. Sunken hollow cheeks and gray under my eyes could not speak well when Will Benteen mentioned that Captain Butler had offered a loan to pay the taxes on Tara.

“How will I pay it back … “ could be my only thought. “I still owe him for saving Melanie.”

“You’re stronger than this,” Will gripped. “It’s deep within you. Yes, you have Ellen’s straight back. But you have a fire!”

Doubting it, doubting him, I watched him become bubbles and grey and smoke. And wondered where, in a place far beyond Tara, that person of fire similar to Scarlett had gone.


End file.
